Hansard

The debate on drugs is long overdue. The reluctance of the SNP to debate drugs in its own parliamentary time tells its own story over the course of the Parliament. It is not a story of malice or bad intent, but more of a lack of ideas and analysis that might help the desperate situation that we have in Scotland, with the worst drug deaths rate in the world.

It pains me to say it, because I have attempted to speak on behalf of people in Dundee, where the crisis is at its worst, for the past ten years. People with whom I went to school are caught up in that cycle of despair, as are classmates of the former Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing, Joe Fitzpatrick. We are the age of that aging cohort of which the Government speaks.

I spoke from these benches back in 2012, in a debate on the Government’s drugs strategy “The road to recovery: a new approach to tackling Scotland’s drug problem”, which was anything but. Eight years later, drug deaths have more than doubled and recovery beds have almost gone. Our drug deaths task force is painfully slow. The Dundee drugs commission did its work in good faith and its report now seems to be gathering dust on the shelf.

The frustrating thing is that those who did the work are clear that there is no silver bullet. All the analysis points towards the need for an investment in community drug workers on the ground to support families and to do the hard yards of walking alongside people who use drugs and supporting their recovery. That is yet to happen.

The path to drugs is wide and open, while so many other paths are closed to young people in Dundee and across Scotland. There are precious few jobs to go to, with few of any standing or earning potential. The dream of having their own house is a distant one for young people. Holidays are for other people. We call it “economic insecurity” and today we are seeing only the dangerous surface of that iceberg, because Covid has created a catastrophe in the economy that we will see over the next few years.

Do we brace ourselves and start trying policies that will stem that tide economically, creating more hope for young people and giving them paths that are an alternative to drugs? Whoever forms the Government in May, I sincerely hope that they will take the shame of our drug deaths far more seriously than it has been taken over my 10 years in this place.

This is my final speech in Holyrood. People try to give such speeches on a positive note. I will do the same when I invoke the incredible people I have met on this journey: the women, men and children that I have had the honour to represent as I have stood alongside them in their struggles. I will never forget the male lawyer who accused the women carers that I represented of “avarice” in an equal pay negotiation, nor their dignity in the face of such entitlement and arrogance. I have listened to, talked with and sometimes cried with people in my surgery. Some of their struggles have been individual, some have become campaigns. It has been a privilege to walk alongside every person.

Neither can I forget the frustration of the past 10 years, when vast swathes of our time was taken up with the brutal debate of the independence referendum, while the drugs crisis wrapped its fingers around the throats of people in my community.

I will never forget the intimidation as Anas Sarwar and I stood shoulder to shoulder in Dundee city square, facing up Reform street as an army of kilts, drums and painted blue faces marched and shouted their way towards us. I felt that I had been transported back to a battle in the 15th century and was not in a modern democracy. The silencing accusation that we were talking down Dundee or talking Scotland down was a phrase cleverly designed to shut down debate and undermine democracy. I was screamed and yelled at by activists carrying “Yes” placards as I went door to door, doing the democratic work of campaigning in my city.

I realise that there is a mirror image to that, but that hard line of division, disruption and rancour prevents a better politics. I am allowed to be honest today: I think that the hard edge of nationalism has worn some of us down, for now. I am glad that our party is presenting new energy and vitality for the next Parliament.

I hope that the next Parliament will realise the power of devolution. There is so much that we can do now. I have learned during my ten years here that the debate about powers and where they lie is often an empty one and often a distraction on purpose. Change comes about by harnessing collective will, leadership, teamwork and drive to make things happen.

I started campaigning for a mental health crisis centre for Dundee more than three years ago. Since then, 100 people in Dundee have lost their lives to suicide. The city has stalled and delayed. This week, we discovered that, rather than using Covid as an excuse as Dundee has done, Perth opened the doors of a mental health crisis centre last June, during the pandemic. That shows that progress can be made.

So much of what is recommended by the Dundee drugs commission could be actioned tomorrow. When we begin to show change, power wielders in other places comply and progress can be swift: Peter Krykant is a powerful example of that. Have the argument about transfer of powers, and we get nowhere fast.

The Scottish Labour amendment reiterates our belief that police resources must continue to prevent supply—James Kelly spoke to that in his opening remarks. Our communities are awash with drugs. I have recently heard of dealers baiting women with free samples of heroin through their letterboxes—women who are in recovery until they succumb to the dealers. In the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee last month, I asked the chief constable about the supply of drugs, and I felt that he was maybe too willing to concede when he said:

“Where the demand exists, the supply will operate.”—[Official Report, Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee, 11 February 2021; c 36.]

This is a day-to-day challenge for policing—that I do not deny—but, for parents trying to keep their children away from drugs, the ready availability and cheap prices that saturation supply creates, and police acceptance of that, do not help at all.

At the end of the day, it is so often women who pick up the pieces of the drugs crisis: supporting their sons and daughters to make it to the next stage; taking grandchildren into their own homes to raise when parents die or are simply too caught up in the drugs cycle to look after them. Grandparents are raising children who have had heroin in their bloodstream in the womb and are dealing the resulting effects of that on the children and on their own wellbeing. Women are resorting to prostitution to buy drugs and feed their children. I often feel—and I have said this to many of them—that, if the women of Dundee with lived experience of drugs in their families were asked to run our drugs services, we might be looking at a completely different picture. That is one reason why I have been proud to stand up for women, especially over the past couple of years.

I come from a city with one of the highest rates of domestic violence. Women know that their lives are not gender neutral, and neither should be the laws that protect us. I would like to say the names of Bennylyn Burke and her two-year-old daughter, Jellica. Police have recovered two bodies in Dundee this afternoon.

I am a great-granddaughter of women who worked in the jute mills, who bore the indignity of having flaps in the back of their overalls so that they could go to the toilet. Women know that their lives are different from men’s.

I would like to thank my lovely husband for his support. I would like to thank my staff, especially Roy O’Kane, for all their work over the years. I would like to thank my dad for giving me my politics, which were passed down to him from his grandfather, who founded the Dundee and District Union of Jute and Flax Workers. I hope that I have been able to give fair Labour representation to the descendants of his members and the people of North East Scotland.

I thank the Labour Party for giving me the opportunity to serve. [Applause.]